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Bodyweight Which crawling style for fixing lower back issues (leopard v. bear)?

Which crawling style for fixing anterior pelvic tilt:

  • the leopard crawl

    Votes: 14 93.3%

  • the bear crawl

    Votes: 1 6.7%
  • Total voters
    15
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Pasibrzuch

Pasibrzuch

Level 6 Valued Member
Hello,
recently I've decided to go on a hip-hinge detox, since it worsened my posture - pushed me into the extended position (the PEC pattern) - and caused some pain despite proper technique, slowing down my recovery from lumbar hernia.
For several weeks I'll be doing only the anterior work.
Many people claim to have repaired their backs with the leopard crawling and I have the impression that this is a go-to crawling style for people on this forum (correct me if I'm mistaken).
However, at the theoretical level, I don't understand how this position could be healing back issues. Gazing forward triggers anterior pelvic tilt and seems to facilitate the extended, ribflared position. Therefore it seems to me that it consolidates the faulty movement pattern.
Instead I do the bear crawl - gaze at the floor and pelvis tilted posteriorly seems to facilitate the anterior chain work and the proper position of the neck and, therefore, of the whole spine. It also annihilates the ribflare.

My question is: since the leopard crawl is so popular here and I never seen any OS video on bear crawling, I wanted to ask if there is any flaw in my reasoning and I'm missing on some benefits of the leopard crawl. Or is it another thing that is goal-dependent and the leopard crawl is used for different problems or just as another exercise for people with no back issues?
 
Pasibrzuch said:
Hello,
recently I've decided to go on a hip-hinge detox, since it worsened my posture - pushed me into the extended position (the PEC pattern) - and caused some pain despite proper technique, slowing down my recovery from lumbar hernia.
For several weeks I'll be doing only the anterior work.
Many people claim to have repaired their backs with the leopard crawling and I have the impression that this is a go-to crawling style for people on this forum (correct me if I'm mistaken).
However, at the theoretical level, I don't understand how this position could be healing back issues. Gazing forward triggers anterior pelvic tilt and seems to facilitate the extended, ribflared position. Therefore it seems to me that it consolidates the faulty movement pattern.
Instead I do the bear crawl - gaze at the floor and pelvis tilted posteriorly seems to facilitate the anterior chain work and the proper position of the neck and, therefore, of the whole spine. It also annihilates the ribflare.

My question is: since the leopard crawl is so popular here and I never seen any OS video on bear crawling, I wanted to ask if there is any flaw in my reasoning and I'm missing on some benefits of the leopard crawl. Or is it another thing that is goal-dependent and the leopard crawl is used for different problems or just as another exercise for people with no back issues?
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i think the idea is that baby and leopard crawling take you right back to repatterning the body's musculature in the way that you first developed as a baby, before you spent decades screwing it up. You're right that leopard crawling has flared ribs and anterior pelvic tilt, but (IME) the way it ties the body and the musculature together eliminates those problems anyways. After all, that was the posture you first moved in and first built strength in so there was a time where that posture was not problematic. The better I get at OS, the less I have to worry about holding thoracic extension with ribs down or holding posterior pelvic tilt to achieve netural pelvic tilt. My body feels like it's recoordinating all those parts for me.

Disclaimer: I am not an expert.
 
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@Pasibrzuch I have gone through the exact same thought process. I would suggest trying both. Alternate between the two and see if you can feel which alleviates your symptoms or makes better improvements for you.

There are also some postural nuances I have noticed between the two, mainly shoulder pro traction. Bear makes protraction (and thus less rib flare) a little more natural. I find that I can still get protraction in leopard , but it feels a bit different. The other point to make is that the closer you hands are to your knees in a leopard crawl, the more arch there will be through the spine, more APT, and more rib flare. When I lengthen my stride in a leopard crawl just a bit, this all falls into a more “neutral” alignment. Try it out by just doing some rocking and elevated rocking first. Walk you hands just a bit farther out than you might normally. The lengthened stride might help with protraction and thus with all the other stuff. You may just have to experiment with altering your positions a bit.
 
Lastly, while I really enjoy everything OS has to offer, I have also had this thought regarding posture and “what you did as a baby.”

Your proportions as an adult are wildly different than they were as a baby.

This is not to say that baby and leopard crawling are ineffective or anything, it’s just something to take into account when you’re trying to make something work for you. That’s why I experiment with my stride and position in crawls and other resets.
 
I've had much better success with Stuart McGill's Big3 to help with my back issues. Crawling never helped, not even a tiny bit. Crawling will have your SI joint and low back move a lot, albeit with a very small range of motion. I even had to stop crawling because of a fall I took while skiing that tweaked my SI joint. Crawling just prevented it from healing properly.
 
I am 100% a staunch advocate of developmental kinesiology theories and practices, but even I have trouble with the "what you did as a baby" tagline. Moving/exercising in primitive postures is wildly useful and can have a wildly positive effect on motor control and patterning of movement, but too many people have pushed it to the extreme, as humans are wont to do.

point 2 - crawling is great for me. I have never had serious back issues but do get really stiff in my left si/hip at times. 4 point rocking and crawling loosen me up without fail

Ieopard vs bear - depends what we mean by bear! I DON'T like the "butt as high as possible" bear, I like the head-shoulders-butt in line bear. I view the leopard as just a tougher version - more hip flexion/external rotation demand.
 
Pasibrzuch said:
Hello,
recently I've decided to go on a hip-hinge detox, since it worsened my posture - pushed me into the extended position (the PEC pattern) - and caused some pain despite proper technique, slowing down my recovery from lumbar hernia.
For several weeks I'll be doing only the anterior work.
Click to expand...

I get what you mean about hip hinge detox -- I can drift into APT after a heavy cycle of pulls, snatches, and cleans.

What I have to do is fairly hardcore PPT exercises to counteract that -- barbell ab roll outs, ring roll outs, hollow body holds, weighted hollow rocks, etc.

I find crawls fun and good proprioception work, but I've never found them to be a magic bullet as they're just not intense enough for my needs.
 
@Pasibrzuch, a couple of things, if you will.

1. There are a lot of assumptions in your initial post about the causes of your problem. I would recommend you either see a trainer or post some videos here - doing all this properly shouldn't cause the problems you're having.

2. I love Tim, but for a lower back issue, my experience and that of many others is that you need stability, not mobility, in your lumbar spine, and you need mobility in your hips. If you're going to crawl, and if it causes movement in your lower back and that helps you, that's great, but it's not something that would work for me and it's not a thing that I would ever recommend. There are people for whom loosening up a stiff lumbar helps, but in my experience they are the exception not the rule.

3. Maybe you just need some hip and hamstring stretching and not to change anything about your exercise - tough to say without seeing you.

-S-
 
Revisiting the neurodevelopmental sequence of movements and positions certainly makes sense, but, like other people have pointed it out on this thread, overdoing it or over-systemising it does not, other than maybe from a business perspective.

I recommend trying the OS system properly by doing all the resets daily for a month or six, not just throw some crawling somewhere in an existing program. The OS stuff requires you to be the judge on what you need. You cycle different movements until you find something that feels useful to you. Then you do that until you start feeling like you don’t need it and then cycle again. I would start with just learning to breathe in the positions and during the movements, then work from there onwards.

That said, there is no single exercise or even a system that will fix everything.
 
Training for Life said:
. . .cycle different movements until you find something that feels useful to you. Then you do that until you start feeling like you don’t need it and then cycle again. I would start with just learning to breathe in the positions and during the movements, then work from there onwards.
Click to expand...
Awesome! This summarizes at least half of my training.
 
Training for Life said:
Revisiting the neurodevelopmental sequence of movements and positions certainly makes sense, but, like other people have pointed it out on this thread, overdoing it or over-systemising it does not, other than maybe from a business perspective.
Click to expand...

I like crawling and other primitive / animal movements on my active recovery / variety / mobility days.

But at the end of the day, they're a fairly low intensity stimulus, and after a few weeks you adapt quickly.

I don't think they're an awesome tool to make you stronger unless you're in need of rehab, injured, or really de-trained.

They're not deadlifts.
 
Steve Freides said:
@Pasibrzuch, a couple of things, if you will.

1. There are a lot of assumptions in your initial post about the causes of your problem. I would recommend you either see a trainer or post some videos here - doing all this properly shouldn't cause the problems you're having.
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I have posted my technique on the forum multiple times and had it okayed most of the times with some minor tweaks. Still, a good point, I will do it soon, maybe some issue will be spotted.

Steve Freides said:
3. Maybe you just need some hip and hamstring stretching and not to change anything about your exercise - tough to say without seeing you.
Click to expand...
quite the contrary - I'm hypermobile. At the moment I'm working at internal rotation and retensioning hamstrings with some PRI drills. Nevertheless, thank you for your suggestion!
Mark Limbaga said:
What is the root cause of your lower back issues?
Click to expand...
That's a very good question.
I got my lumbar herniated multiple times - misdiagnosed. The last time it happened, almost a year ago, it was a 10/10 pain that immobilized me for a few weeks. It was most probably a result of serious overtraining + cutting weight for my Muay Thai fight. I also blame roundhouse kicking - I always feel some discomfort in my lower back after doing them.
This time, my hernia doesn't heal so fast. I visited several physios but they okayed me for coming back to my sport despite me reporting discomfort and post-training stiffness in my back.
Since nobody has helped me, I started to educating myself. The only thing that has helped recently was my discovery of PRI and doing techniques for the patho-PEC pattern. Doing hip-hinge exercises seemed to counter the corrective drills. I wanted to add crawling because many report that they managed to repair their back with it and increase their strength in many other exercises crawling exclusively. Still, I'm not sure of this because of the reasons stated in the first post.
 
Pasibrzuch said:
the only thing that has helped recently was my discovery of PRI and doing techniques for the patho-PEC pattern. Doing hip-hinge exercises seemed to counter the corrective drills. I wanted to add crawling because many report that they managed to repair their back with it and increase their strength in many other exercises crawling exclusively. Still, I'm not sure of this because of the reasons stated in the first post.
Click to expand...
PRI principles are what have helped me the most. Maybe you have tried this, but keep them in mind when you try your crawling, especially things like left and right hip shift, if they don't bother your back. Maybe you've also read about the zone of apposition in PRI, but re-establishing that should help with the diaphragm contracting properly, which is supposed to help with reflexive back stabilization.
 
Pasibrzuch said:
I have posted my technique on the forum multiple times and had it okayed most of the times with some minor tweaks. Still, a good point, I will do it soon, maybe some issue will be spotted.


quite the contrary - I'm hypermobile. At the moment I'm working at internal rotation and retensioning hamstrings with some PRI drills. Nevertheless, thank you for your suggestion!

That's a very good question.
I got my lumbar herniated multiple times - misdiagnosed. The last time it happened, almost a year ago, it was a 10/10 pain that immobilized me for a few weeks. It was most probably a result of serious overtraining + cutting weight for my Muay Thai fight. I also blame roundhouse kicking - I always feel some discomfort in my lower back after doing them.
This time, my hernia doesn't heal so fast. I visited several physios but they okayed me for coming back to my sport despite me reporting discomfort and post-training stiffness in my back.
Since nobody has helped me, I started to educating myself. The only thing that has helped recently was my discovery of PRI and doing techniques for the patho-PEC pattern. Doing hip-hinge exercises seemed to counter the corrective drills. I wanted to add crawling because many report that they managed to repair their back with it and increase their strength in many other exercises crawling exclusively. Still, I'm not sure of this because of the reasons stated in the first post.
Click to expand...
Stealing from @Geoff Neupert : how often do you do deadbugs and how much volume?
 
I've been OS certified and I'm not a fan of it anymore. Too many people abuse themselves with the weights and then try to 'repair' themselves with OS resets. In reality, they should be establishing a broad base of simple gpp with patience and consistency, then they wouldn't need OS at all. Keeping goals intrinsic with mobility and health at the forefront of your thoughts.
 
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StrengthIsKind said:
I've been OS certified and I'm not a fan of it anymore. Too many people abuse themselves with the weights and then try to 'repair' themselves with OS resets. In reality, they should be establishing a broad base of simple gpp with patience and consistency, then they wouldn't need OS at all. Keeping goals intrinsic with mobility and health at the forefront of your thoughts.
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Fascinating. Would you mind elaborating please?
 
Geoff Neupert said:
Fascinating. Would you mind elaborating please?
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Sure. I noticed that allot of people who were trying to use the system, were often times not doing the basic work elsewhere. When I reference basic work I mean things like joint circling, basic strength training and even walking. Crawling and resets are not going to counter dangerous or ineffective training. Going too heavy too soon or just not properly building up to an exercise.

That's not to say I don't find value in rolling, crawling or resets, it's just that many people will use it as a fix all antidote instead of addressing the root cause which for many is improper strength training.
 
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